Dutch & Danish seizures of illegally trafficked German horse meat do not mean revived demand WASHINGTON D.C., BRUSSELS––Yes, the Bureau of Land Management under Donald Trump appointee William Perry Pendley is desperately eager to dispose of as many as 45,000 wild horses in holding pens, plus about 68,000 of the estimated 95,000 wild horses […]
“That touch of mink” & COVID-19: Dutch outbreak hints mink may be host
Fur farming to end in The Netherlands by 2024 WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands––The discovery that ranched mink can become infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus may lend momentum to the Dutch national plan to phase out mink farming entirely by 2024. Concern that mink themselves might become a COVID-19 reservoir may also dampen Chinese enthusiasm for rebuilding […]
Iconic animal use events fall to COVID-19: “Running of the bulls” is latest
“Social distancing” also shuts down SeaWorld, seal hunt, fur auctions, Kentucky Derby, & the carriage horses in Central Park PAMPLONA, Spain ––The 700-year-old Festival of San Fermin, featuring bullfights and the “running of the bulls” through the cobbled streets of the oldest part of Pamplona, Spain, was on April 21, 2020 indefinitely postponed due […]
COVID-19 brings no net gains for marine life––except in Iceland
“There is no market,” but fish, shellfish, seals, & whales are all still hunted WESTERLY, Rhode Island; HONOLULU, Hawaii; REYKJAVIK, Iceland––Restaurant closures ordered because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have economically crippled the U.S. commercial fishing industry from Long Island Sound to Hawaii, and have hit the fishing industry worldwide, but––except in Iceland, where a case […]
Dog study let pit bull owners lie & still found behavior is breed-specific
Finn study is third in six months to refute the saw that “It’s all in how you raise them.” HELSINKI, Finland––For the third time in six months a major new study of the heritability of dog behavior, published by a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal, has refuted the shibboleth of pit bull advocacy that “It’s all […]
Why U.S. furriers don’t advertise much any more
Mink coat ads vanish from newsprint SACRAMENTO, California––A furrier somewhere in the U.S. may yet buy a page of advertising, in what little remains of 2019, in one of the thousands of newspapers that are electronically searchable at www.NewspaperArchive.com. As of December 29, 2019, however, the year appeared to be ending without a single NewspaperArchive […]
Fire & ice puts Australian koalas and Icelandic horses at urgent risk
Songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1982 recommended “50/50 fire and ice” as the best response to a crisis. That isn’t working for either Icelandic horses or koalas. REYKJAVIK, Iceland; SYDNEY, Australia––Eco-disasters afflicting Icelandic horses and Australian koalas starkly illustrate extreme and contrasting effects of global warming as 2019 comes to an end. Hundreds of Icelandic […]
Whaling harpoons Icelandic tourism & the whole nation suffers (UPDATE!)
Iceland suspends whaling after ANIMALS 24-7 exposes how killing whales wounded a whale-watching industry that brings in twice as much money REYKJAVIK, Iceland––The two remaining Icelandic whaling companies, Hvalur, killing fin whales, and IP Útgerð, killing minke whales, on the afternoon of June 27, 2019 jointly announced that they will not go whaling this year, […]
Drove out the snakes? What did St. Patrick do with the Irish wolves?
He made friends with them! DUBLIN, TEL AVIV, ROME––As of St. Patrick’s Day 2019, there are still no wild snakes in Ireland, more than 1,660 years after the patron saint of Ireland allegedly drove them all out. Paleontologists say there were never any wild snakes in Ireland in the first place. But there were […]
Walls, boar purges, & no-man’s-land fail to stop African swine fever
Wild boar to blame for only 1% of outbreaks, Chinese learn PARIS, France––Donald Trump is not the only world leader who has yet to learn that walls don’t work––not if the goal is really to keep a foreign threat out, as opposed to presenting the appearance to a political base of doing something drastic […]